You Think Too Much
by Anya2
Summary: An accident leaves Elizabeth’s life in danger and Rodney’s only hope of being able to help her is to try and quiet his over active brain. But with the mistakes he made in ‘Trinity’ still fresh on his mind, this is easier said than done…
1. Chapter 1

**Title: **You Think Too Much  
**Rating:** K+  
**Pairing: **McKay/Weir  
**Spoilers:** Up to and including 'Trinity'  
**Summary: **An accident leaves Elizabeth's life in danger and Rodney's only hope of being able to help her is to try and quiet his over active brain. But with the mistakes he made in 'Trinity' still fresh on his mind, this is easier said than done...

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"Morning."

Elizabeth looked up in surprise, not realising until she heard the cheerful voice just how involved she had gotten in the report she was reading. Her gaze immediately settled upon Rodney, standing on the threshold of her office, a very pleased grin on his face. The sight made her smile slightly in return. She always found his good moods oddly infectious and he just had one of those smiles that, when it was genuine, she couldn't help but share. She wasn't entirely sure if that was a weakness on her part.

"Rodney", she greeted with a bright nod, habit making her push the tablet PC away a little so that he could see he had her full attention, "What can I do for you?"

She knew that smile of his. It meant that he either wanted something from her or he'd found some new and exciting discovery that he wished to share. Often it was a mixture of both.

He walked into the office, clearly considering her question an invitation to do so. The infectious zeal that she had made promise to guard against more resolutely since the incident on Doranda was clear in his manner and tone and, despite herself, she could already feel it drawing her in.

"We've been playing with the control chair," he began with unabashed glee, his hands as always punctuating his words.

"'Playing'?" she immediately queried with a raised eyebrow, not liking his flippant use of the term. Playing with a highly destructive ten thousand year old weapon did not sound like a good idea to her. In fact, she knew it wasn't. Worryingly enough it was just the sort of thing she could see Rodney doing.

"Just running some simple tests on it," he adjusted with a dismissive wave of his hand, managing to say it as if it was the most basic thing in the world, "Now we've got the ZPM installed we can do more stuff without worrying about draining the city's power too drastically."

Elizabeth nodded, seeing his reasoning and reassuring herself that he was only trying to help. She was constantly impressed and surprised by the initiative Rodney took to benefit the city and the people living here. She knew that he partly did these things for his own glory; that he enjoyed the challenge and praise associated with doing the seemingly impossible. But when her older self had told them of how the Rodney she knew had died in order make sure other people had gotten out of the rapidly flooding city….well, Elizabeth hadn't been surprised at all. As well hidden as it was, she had seen from the very start that underneath the snark and the bluster was a selfless side that he wasn't often credited for. Although that probably had something to do with the fact that his self obsessed side was the far more vocal of the two.

"And if we could get it up and running it would certainly give us an advantage should the Wraith come calling again," she added, pointing out the practical benefit to his work, just in case he hadn't gotten any further than considering this as a theoretical interest .

He nodded, clearly pleased with himself, "Precisely."

Elizabeth frowned, her sharp mind already working through the possibilities and problems that he may have come across and settling upon the most pressing one, "But I thought we were out of drones."

"Nearly," he agreed, holding up a finger to indicate she'd hit on the crucial point, "But we've found a couple of whole but apparently deactivated ones in storage, plus a few in bits. And since we installed the ZPM we've been able to get to sections of the Atlantis database that we haven't been able to access before."

Elizabeth's interest suddenly pricked up further, "You know where there are more?"

"No," he said with a smug grin, almost like a showman about to reveal his latest amazing trick.

"Then you know how to make some more," she surmised.

"We found the plans," he said with a nod, "Problem is we don't have some of the constituent parts."

"But?" she pressed.

"Who says there's a 'but'?" he asked, almost teasingly.

She gave him a knowing smile, "If there wasn't you wouldn't be here."

He accepted that with a nod.

"Well we have managed to use some of the principles and put together something that should do a similar job," he explained, "It won't have the same yield as one of the Ancient drones, but it should still pack one hell of a punch and we could still use the chair to launch them. Possibly."

Elizabeth frowned just a little. That was certainly a big discovery and a very big deal for the city and the expedition should be able to pull it off. "Why didn't you mention you were working on this before?" she asked, voicing the concern that immediately struck her.

He shrugged, "I wasn't sure how successful it would be. I didn't want to get your hopes up."

She looked at him a little curiously.

"By 'your', I mean 'everyone'," he clarified rather awkwardly, "Collective 'your', not you personally 'your'. Not that I'd want to get your hopes up unnecessarily or-"

"Well I'm very glad it worked," she interrupted encouragingly, trying hard to smooth the amused smile from her face, "At least we won't be sitting ducks anymore."

Glancing at the time, realising that she was on the verge of missing a meeting, she scooped up the tablet and stood, heading passed him.

"That's really good, Rodney," she said, patting him on the shoulder, "I've got a meeting with Dr Cooke right now, but keep me posted with your progress, okay?"

"Actually," he said, hurriedly following on behind her as she left the room, "We don't know if they work yet."

"You don't?" she asked, a little distractedly as she swiftly walked down the steps, heading for the nearest transporter.

"No," he confirmed, "That's why we need to do some tests."

She suddenly stopped at the base of the stairs, turning to look back at him, her instinct immediately kicking in. "Tests?" she queried, looking for further information.

"A couple of test firings," he said with remarkable nonchalance, trying to make it sound simple, "Nothing too big. Just want to test the delivery and control systems behave them say way they do in the simulations."

She wasn't buying it.

"No," she said firmly, turning and walking off again. Just as she predicted he was immediately at her heels.

"What do you mean, 'no'?" he asked incredulously, "How can it be 'no'?"

"I can't give my permission for you to do test firings around the city," she reasoned, "Not just like that."

"Elizabeth-"

"Rodney," she sighed in exasperation, holding up her hand to stop him, "I appreciate all your hard work, really I do, but the idea of you firing untested weapons anywhere near this city isn't something I can just say 'yes' to."

He visibly stiffened, and she knew at once he had taken everything she had said the wrong way.

"What do you mean, the idea of 'me' firing it?" he snapped defensively, "So you'd be okay with say, Sheppard doing it? Or how about Zelenka? Why not just give him my job whilst you're at it? Hey, I could do with the time off."

"Rodney, I don't doubt your ability" she said, soothing his ranting with a reassuring touch on his arm, knowing how his recent mishap had left him more paranoid than ever about what others thought of him, "Nor do I think you would intentionally do something that would possibly endanger this city. But at the end of the day, it is my responsibility. Get your research together and you can present it to me properly after lunch, okay? I'm sure it'll be fine. But you have to appreciate that I need to be certain about the possible risks before authorising something like that."

"Oh. Well, yes. Of course you do".

His manner had instantly softened and he had the good grace to look mildly apologetic about his unjustified paranoia, whilst the enthusiasm gradually returned to his face.

"Okay," he agreed brightly, seemingly appeased, "Right".

Elizabeth smiled at him. It appeared that she did indeed have the handling of Rodney McKay down to a fine art. After his recent errors she had had to reign him in a little but there was a fine line to tread between being cautious and damaging his confidence with mistrust.

"I'll go do that report then," he said brightly, "After lunch, yes?"

"After lunch," she confirmed with a smile.

She watched him head off with all the enthusiasm of some kind of hyperactive puppy and shook her head in fond amusement. Then she continued on, heading to the transporter and the west pier of the city where Dr Cooke's team had apparently found something she just had to see.


	2. Chapter 2

"Dr Harding," Elizabeth said, nodding a greeting as she stepped out of the transporter almost straight into the woman in question.

Rachel Harding was one of the youngest members of the growing anthropology team that had been assigned to Atlantis. When they had first arrived here Dr Cooke had only had two assistants and had complained bitterly about it. But, as Elizabeth reasoned, as important as she agreed documenting the Atlanteans and their lifestyle was, staying alive and finding a way to contact Earth had to be their priority.

Harding had arrived with the latest batch of scientists on the Daedalus. Her age had surprised Elizabeth greatly, but according to her personnel file she was a brilliant linguist and a very thorough researcher. And one of the many people Elizabeth realised that she didn't know enough about.

"Dr Weir, Dr Cooke's waiting for you," Harding said with barely contained anticipation, falling into step beside Elizabeth and immediately indicating the way to go.

"Your report from yesterday said that you think you've found some kind of Ancient archive…" Elizabeth said, pressing for more information. She had wanted to come down and investigate this as soon as Cooke had contacted her, but other business had gotten in the way. Besides, he was insistent that she give him twenty four hours to finalise his findings before he spoke further, promising to keep her updated on any major discoveries.

"Yes, it seemed to be isolated from the main archive we've found before."

Elizabeth frowned curiously.

"Why?"

"We don't really know. Perhaps they wanted to protect it. Perhaps it was sensitive information they wanted to keep safe."

Elizabeth raised an eyebrow, "Sensitive information? I thought Dr Cooke said it was some kind of cultural database."

"That's what we thought initially," Harding replied, unable to hide her excitement, "But Dr Cooke found something this morning. There was data buried beneath the cultural stuff. Things about experiments."

"Experiments?"

"And then we found the device."

Elizabeth stopped, suddenly feeling like she was missing too many important details here and not liking it one bit, "Wait a minute, what device?"

"Well we think it's a power source," Harding explained, "Only in the experimental stages, but we think it shares some similar technology with the device Colonel Sheppard's team found on Doranda.I don't claim to be an expert but from what I've translated it appears that they were trying to use the technology in a number of applications, not just weapons like we originally thought. And there are some vague mentions of the Ancient outpost in the notes which further suggests the two are somehow related."

A cold chill ran through Elizabeth as soon as Harding spoke. Her instant gut reaction was to order everyone out of the area and have the thing safely removed to a derelict planet and detonated. Caldwell would probably have accused her of over reacting, of not taking a measured view and thinking of the risks but not weighing up the possible benefits. But he hadn't seen the deep space scans Zelenka had brought her. He hadn't seen the remains of a dozen planets floating in belts, an ominous and sad reminder even when seen in the scan's mixture of solid hues. She had originally intended upon showing Rodney the footage, just to get it clear in his head what the consequences of his actions had been. But she just couldn't bring herself to do it. His reaction to Collins' death had shown her how personally he took these things. She wanted to make him cautious, not destroy him. She still deep down oddly felt like she should be protecting him.

"So, like the one that exploded and destroyed five sixths of the solar system," she pointed out, trying hard to strike a reasonable balance between distinctly concerned, but not over reacting.

"Oh it's no where near anything on that scale," Harding soothed, "Tiny in comparison. They might have been trying to find out what went wrong on Doranda at a safer scale or they might have been trying to make a smaller, more viable version. Either way it looks like it was one of the last things they were working on before they abandoned the city."

Elizabeth nodded, only mildly comforted by that. This was the second time this morning someone had tried to convince her that a potentially disastrous piece of engineering was nothing to worry about.

"I trust Dr Cooke has left it well enough alone," she said in a tone that stated very clearly what she expected the answer to be. She had already decided that she needed to have serious words with him about just what sort of things she was referring to when she asked him to keep her appraised of any major discoveries.

"He's just downloading the data from it onto the decoding program on one of the laptops. He thought Dr McKay's team might be able to get a better idea of what it was for that way. We haven't touched the hardware."

"Good," Elizabeth said firmly, glad to hear a bit of commonsense.

"He's in the central laboratory just down here," Harding said as they turned into a different corridor.

Elizabeth decided that she would at least take a quick look at Cooke's findings so he was aware that she knew it was his discovery before she called Rodney down here. She momentarily wondered if he'd be up to it. Whilst he appeared to be just about over his crisis of confidence, the last thing she needed was a relapse from him. Or worse, a return of his overconfidence because he felt he had something to prove.

She just had to hope her trust in him was well placed.

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Rodney sighed in exasperation as he walked through the doors of the control room with Radek still at his heels.

"You know, there's plenty of other stuff you could be doing," he suggested none too subtly as he headed up to Elizabeth's office, a hastily constructed report in his hands. Okay so she had said after lunch and it was only half an hour since he'd left her, but there was no harm in showing a bit of enthusiasm. Hopefully it would get across just how committed to this he was. And how certain he was that he was right. Elizabeth had often assured him recently that she had full confidence in him. Too many times really. He was starting to wonder if she meant it or if she just thought it was what he needed to hear.

"You have many things you could be doing yourself, I'm sure," Radek countered without faltering, "And as you often say, all that you do is of the highest importance. Why do you not let me be the delivery boy, hmm?"

He went to grab the report out of Rodney's hands but McKay was surprisingly quick and turned it out of his reach.

"You just want to take all the credit for yourself," Radek snapped at him with a scowl.

Rodney rolled his eyes, "It's not a competition."

"With you, everything's a competition!"

Rodney's indignant reply was cut off when they reached the top of the stairs and came across Sheppard who was looking at them with an amused grin on his face.

"What?" Rodney snapped.

Sheppard took no offence at his tone, just looked annoyingly cheerful.

"Nothing," he brushed off, nodding towards the thick file Rodney was holding, "What's that? Bit of light reading?"

Rodney sighed, wondering why he was going to bother dignifying that with a response. Of course the answer was because the more people who knew about his achievement, the better. Not that he'd admit that out loud.

"We may have found a weapon to replace the Ancient drones," he said, managing to give it an almost nonchalant tone as though it was the easiest thing in the world. Or at least it was to him.

Sheppard's face immediately lit up in the way that only talk of things that could make large explosions was able to do.

"Cool."

"Yes, it is actually" Rodney agreed with a nod, no longer able to quash his own enthusiasm to a dignified level, the rapid explanatory movements of his hands hampered by the file he was still clutching, "We've taken the basic principles of an a-bomb and-"

"Woah," Sheppard interrupted with a sudden frown, "Hold on. Is that safe?"

Ever since the incident with the Ancient weapon, Rodney had always felt this odd feeling inside when someone questioned his work. Like someone was suddenly holding his innards with a vice. He knew that the Colonel's question was a reasonable one and that it was likely due to a lack of knowledge rather than a lack of faith. He couldn't help but wonder though if Sheppard would be asking that if Zelenka was the one doing the explaining.

He certainly was getting more paranoid by the day.

"What? What do you mean is that safe?" he snapped, bristling, his whole body tensing without his command, "Do you think I'd do it if it wasn't?"

"It's perfectly safe, Colonel," Radek interjected, trying to be peace keeper.

"There's no need to be like that, Rodney," Sheppard said with a frown at what he clearly considered was an overreaction.

"Like what?" he asked caustically.

"That," Sheppard replied, nodding towards him.

Rodney frowned, "Well when you ask stupid questions about things you don't have a clue about then how do you expect me to-"

"You just…..have a habit of blowing stuff up, that's all," Sheppard interrupted as tactfully as he could muster, "I thought you'd be showing a bit of caution."

Rodney looked skywards, "You make one little mistake…"

"Little?"

"Colonel," he huffed firmly, "I know what I'm doing okay?"

He was just prepared to walk off, deciding that he shouldn't have to stand there and defend himself to anyone, when he was halted by the entire room rocking violently, the light's flickering and the personnel struggling to grip onto anything to stay upright. It reminded Rodney of a time he'd been in California once for an astrophysics conference and there'd been an earthquake. He hadn't liked it much then and this was far more extreme. And accompanied by the only slightly muffled sounds of a large explosion.

When all was finally still again, Rodney looked around as he steadied himself on his feet. He shared a quick look with Radek before turning to a very concerned looking Sheppard.

"I didn't do that," he immediately insisted, the shock his voice mirroring that on his face, "That wasn't me."

Sheppard frowned deeply as he turned towards the sergeant manning the main control desk that an alarm was blaring from.

"What the hell was that?" he asked, all business, the cheerfulness in his usual manner entirely vanished, not bothering to explain to Rodney that he had never even considered it was his fault. He didn't have time for the other man's paranoia right now.

Like most of the other people in the room, the sergeant looked rather stunned but he quickly shook himself out of it and focused on his job, consulting the panel in front of him.

"It felt like an earthquake," one of the nearby scientists commented.

Radek shook his head, pushing past a still slightly bewildered Rodney to join Sheppard at the desk, "No. We carried out extensive geological surveys of the area last month. We are no where near any fault lines. Certainly not close enough to feel anything to that magnitude."

Rodney shook his head quickly, clearing his mind as he stepped up to join them.

"Besides," he added, "If that was an earthquake there'd have been a tidal wave with it and at best we'd be up to our ankles in water."

"And worst?" Sheppard asked, folding his arms.

"We'd be sinking."

"Right, so no earthquake…."

"Sir," the sergeant spoke up, "Scans are showing extensive damage to the west pier. The safety systems have kicked in. Looks like some kind of massive explosion."

"What?" Sheppard asked, utterly bewildered by the news.

Rodney wished he could share Sheppard's ignorance, but as soon as the sergeant spoke his brain went into overdrive and threw a sickening realization at him. Stepping around the desk he shoved the sergeant none too gently aside, the way he had done to Peter countless times before when this had been his desk. His eyes scanned the display, taking in the information at a rapid pace as his fingers flew across it, bringing up different readings and telemetries.

"Looks like there's a big hole at the end of the pier," he said hollowly, "About a hundred square foot looks totally destroyed. A big chunk after that has suffered structural damage. The security system has shut down the entire pier because of the structural instabilities and flooding risk."

"Jesus…" Sheppard muttered under his breath, clearly still taken aback but this sudden turn of events, "Was anyone down there?"

Rodney looked up at him, feeling the blood drain from his face as his whole body went utterly numb. He'd already figured out, had already remembered that fact, but the idea of saying it out loud….It made it true. It was almost like he was condemning her.

"Rodney," Sheppard prompted, a mixture of impatience and apprehension.

"Dr Cooke's team was down there," he said, swallowing hard into his painfully dry throat, "They were looking at some kind of Ancient database. And Elizabeth. She'd gone down to check on their progress."


	3. Chapter 3

As Rodney walked into the jumper bay two paces behind Sheppard he could already see Carson and his team assembled and waiting. It was a damn good job Sheppard was around because if Rodney had been in charge the people out on the pier would've had no chance.

As soon as he had learnt that there could be causalities, Sheppard had radioed Carson to tell him to prepare. Then he'd ordered Rodney and Zelenka into action, telling them to get the section reopened whilst he went and organized a rescue team. When he had returned ten minutes later with Teyla, Ronon and half a dozen soldiers in tow, he had told the scientists quite firmly that they had better be ready to go. Rodney was glad Radek was there because his brain seemed to be stuck quite firmly in first gear and he wasn't entirely sure if he was missing something vital. But no, Radek confirmed it; the section could not be reopened. Not from out here anyway. Whilst the city still detected a threat to its citizens it wouldn't let them anywhere near the danger area and trying to override it would likely take days which clearly wasn't an option.

One young captain had suggested that they used the Daedalus to beam out any injured people.

Although a wonderful idea it didn't really work since, as Rodney had caustically pointed out, the Daedalus was still at least a week away.

Whilst Rodney's mind was going over increasingly elaborate plans to disable the Atlantis security protocols, Sheppard had come up with the idea of using the jumpers. The external landing area on the west pier may still be undamaged. If it was, they could land there and get people out that way. And if it wasn't they could always hover over it and winch people up and down.

He had radioed Carson to tell him of the change of plan and had told Rodney he was coming with them.

Rodney had instantly paled at that idea, the first thought that ran through his mind was 'oh my god, but what if she's dead? I don't want to see that.'

"Rodney!" Sheppard had snapped impatiently when he had failed to respond, "Did you hear me? We might need you down there."

He had hurriedly nodded in response, a sense of duty overriding his fears, whilst Radek had offered to stay behind and try to find any possible ways to open the doors. Not that he really had any hope of finding one.

"What's the situation, Colonel?" Carson asked as soon as he spotted them entering the jumper bay.

"There are ten people down there, including Weir," he said grimly.

Rodney noted his use of 'are' instead of 'were'. Sheppard always was an optimist.

Carson nodded as behind him two other medical personnel loaded emergency supplies into the back of one of the jumpers, "Have you heard anything from them?"

"No," he replied, in a firm, businesslike tone, "But McKay reckons that the after effects of the explosion would likely stop any transmissions getting through."

Rodney couldn't help but admire how calm and collected they were being about all this. He wondered if they felt as bad inside as he did and if they were just better at hiding it.

"Hopefully Zelenka will get the doors open down there," Sheppard continued, "But for now we're stuck with airlifting people out. I've got another jumper standing by but I don't want to put any more stress on the structure over there than need's be. We'll go over there and check it out, if it's okay we'll radio for you to join us."

"Right," Carson nodded.

Sheppard walked off into the jumper and Rodney made a move to follow him when Carson lightly gripped his arm.

"Are you alright, Rodney?" he asked with genuine concern.

He wasn't. Really, really wasn't in a way he didn't properly understand, but they didn't exactly have time for it right now.

"Fine," he lied.

Carson looked at him skeptically, but let him go anyway.

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As soon as the jumper cleared the opening in the roof it was startling obvious where they were headed. Plumes of thick, black smoke were billowing up from the west pier. As they got closer, Teyla and Ronon rose out of their seats to get a closer look at the destruction. Rodney however stuck to his like someone had stapled him there. Even from his position however he could see that at least one of the rooms had been viciously ripped apart and was now little more than twisted and blacked strips of metal. No one in there could have survived.

"The smoke's too thick," Ronon stated grimly, "We won't be able to see where we're landing."

Sheppard frowned, clearly aware of that fact but certainly not liking it.

"We'll go through it and circle around a couple of times," he said, "See if we can thin it out enough to see what's what."

He was sure Sheppard was doing things as quickly as he could, but they seemed to be taking forever. And all the while Rodney was wondering what his life would be like here without Elizabeth and repeatedly coming up with the same answer.

Lonelier.

He knew he took her for granted quite a lot. To be honest he knew he did that to most people but she at least seemed to make more effort than many others. When everyone else snapped at him and got irritated at his manner she was always calm, patient and kind. She understood and accepted that that was who he was and, to his great surprise, it didn't seem to bother her. She had always made him feel at ease where others didn't. She was one of the reasons he had decided to come on this trip in the first place – he had felt more comfortable with her in their first brief talk about the possibilities of the mission than he had with anyone in all his months in Russia. It hadn't taken him long to come to the conclusion that it was better to be stuck off world in a potentially hazardous situation with someone you like, than safely freezing your ass off in Russia whilst despising near everyone around you. She'd given him a chance and he'd never even thanked her for that. And maybe now he had missed that opportunity for good.

He firmly pushed that thought away.

Although in hindsight it was a little better than the other more grim ones that kept assaulting him in its place. Sometimes he cursed his over active brain and this was certainly one of those times. No matter how hard he tried to force it not to, it kept coming up with every horrible possibility as to her fate that it was able to conjure, each gradually worse than the last. He didn't like being a pessimist and he certainly didn't want to be one. He just couldn't help it. Experience had taught him that if you expected the worst then you could only be pleasantly surprised. He just hoped that this was one of those times. He didn't want to contemplate the alternative.

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When Elizabeth gingerly opened an eye the world spun so violently that she nearly retched. Okay, she had to take it easy. Little steps, that's what was needed right now.

She kept her eyes tightly shut, knowing that opening them would likely make her throw up, and instead just concentrated on regaining her other senses and ignoring the intense throbbing in her head. She was lying on the floor in a rather awkward position that much she was aware of from the cold hardness under her cheek and the rapidly forming ache in her back and limbs. Her lungs felt labored and uncomfortable, the smell of smoke in the air making her instantly cough when she attempted a deep breath, sending a jolt of pain up her spine. She closed her mouth firmly, determined not to do that again. Ever so slowly she rolled over from her uncomfortable, face down position and onto her back. After taking a few moments to get used to that, she slowly opened her eyes, taking a few calm but shallow breaths to ease the nausea that had risen up once more. She blinked a couple of times as light shone down upon her and it took her a long moment to realise that she was looking through gaping hole in the ceiling, sunlight poking through a drifting haze of smoke that was partly obscuring the sky.

That wasn't right.

A sudden chill ran straight through the heart of her as she realised that she had no idea what had happened. Really thinking about it, the last thing she remembered was walking with Dr Harding back towards the transporter, giving her strict instructions on how some investigation should be carried out - although she was having a hard time remember what was being investigated in the first place. She thought she had said something about consulting Rodney, then she had a vague memory of sudden activity, an alarm going off, some shouting and then…..nothing. She felt suddenly panicked at the idea. What on earth had happened? Had the Wraith discovered they were still here and attacked? No, that couldn't be it. They'd have known they were coming long ago, the deep space sensors…

For a moment she considered the Genii, but quickly dismissed that. They didn't have the technology for an attack like this. Besides, last time they had taken Atlantis it had been when numbers on the base were far depleted. They'd have more commonsense than to attack when they place was heavily defended.

Fear ran through her, hand in hand with her confusion. She didn't even know how long she'd been unconscious. Seconds? Minutes? Hours? Why hadn't anyone come down to help? Did they even know she was in trouble? Or were they in trouble themselves?

Elizabeth shook her head, immediately regretting it as her nausea returned. Lying here wondering wasn't going to help anyone, especially not her. She had to get up and do something if she was going to be of use to herself or others.

Carefully she sat up, trying hard to ignore the way her vision made everything seem to spin and tilt as she did so, concentrating on getting herself vertical at least. When she made it, she gave herself time to sit there and breathe steadily, settling her balance so she could tell up from down and the whole thing wasn't just a swirling mess. As her vision returned to some semblance of normality, she quickly checked herself over, squeezing her limbs as a rather crude way of searching for broken bones. Whilst all her prodding and poking made her wince, she was rather relieved to realise that was likely from bruising rather than anything more serious. The only problem area seemed to be her pounding head and, when she carefully pressed her fingers against the area and took them away again, she was unsurprised to see blood. Still, she was conscious and could remember her name so it could be that bad. All in all, it looked like she'd been remarkably fortunate.

It certainly didn't feel that way however as she stiffly got to her feet, almost able to disregard the now familiar sense of nausea any movement seemed to provoke. She let out a long sigh as she surveyed the destruction around her. There was rubble and twisted metal everywhere. It looked like some kind of bomb had gone off. Though, she realized, it hadn't been anywhere in the immediate vicinity as there was no sign of charring or burning.

That and she wasn't dead.

If this had been caused by some kind of explosion, as she suspected, then the shockwave that it had created had done this. And it must've been one hell of a bang to cause this type of damage to an Ancient construction. She just hoped no people had been in the vicinity at the time.

Oddly enough amongst all her aches and pains, she suddenly realised that her ear felt hot and uncomfortable, like it did sometimes when she fell asleep with earrings on and they pressed against her all night. She reached up to touch it with a frown, her eyes scanning the floor for the source of the problem. She quickly hit upon something she could have scolded herself for forgetting. Bending down to pick up her headset, she was dismayed to find it bent and twisted out of shape. She decided to try regardless, pressing it to her ear.

"This is Dr Weir, can anyone hear me?"

Silence.

"Colonel Sheppard?...Teyla?...Rodney?"

Still nothing.

She sighed, knowing it was likely that the thing had been broken. Surely a massive explosion would hardly have gone unnoticed though. There had to be help on the way. Still, it didn't hurt to be cautious.

"Look," she said into the device, "I can't hear anyone, but if someone can hear me, there seems to have been some kind of explosion on the west pier. Cause as yet unknown. There appears to be quite extensive structural damage and there may be casualties."

She paused. The words had come to her lips before she had consciously considered the idea. Her memory may be patchy but she was certain that other people had been down here too. The likelihood was that some were also injured. Possibly badly.

"We need help as soon as possible," she hurriedly finished, "Weir out."

She pulled the device away from her ear, pocketing it just in case it did decide to start working later. If there were casualties around she had to try to find them and do what she could until proper help arrived. Looking left and right down the corridor, she figured it would be best to go right, back towards the edge of the pier. The damage seemed to be more extensive in that direction and any people trapped down there were more likely to need her help.

If they weren't already beyond it.


End file.
